Al-Bashir, presumably reacting to the indictment, has banned a multitude of aid agencies from the Darfuri region. Those supporting the ICC – and Western nations in the favorable position to help – need to pick up the slack and protect Darfuris from further pain caused by the backlash. As Kristof puts it,
So now President Obama and other leaders — hello, Gordon Brown, you there? — need to back up the I.C.C. arrest warrant and push to reverse the expulsion of aid workers, while working with Arab countries like Qatar that want to help.
Glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that. On the other hand, as good news has it, the ICC does have it’s upside:
Intriguingly, Khartoum is full of rumors that the handful of leaders just below Mr. Bashir are thinking of throwing him overboard to save themselves. We can encourage that by making it clear that Sudan will pay a price if the killings continue.
Should we want the ICC to be seen as a positive force in the realm of ending atrocities (like what’s happened in Northern Uganda and what’s happening in Darfur), decisive action must quickly follow the indictment. However, naturally, there’s this tiny issue:
As a legal expert for New York-based Human Rights Watch, Richard Dicker, noted this week, the “Achilles heel” of the ICC is that it has no police force to carry out its warrants … Instead, the Hague-based ICC depends on governments, mainly those of the suspects it indicts, to enforce its wishes.